by Elise Faber
Today was here and now, and if Bec had learned nothing else through this whole painful endeavor, it was that she had to live for today.
“I love you,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you. I hated you. I loathed you. I wanted to put your balls in a meat grinder”—she grinned at his expression—“but I think I always loved you, Luke Pearson. Even when I didn’t want to.”
Then before he could reply, before she lost her nerve, Bec kissed him again.
“Make love to me,” she murmured against his lips. “Please.”
Emerald eyes met hers, warm but searching for long moments. Luke swallowed hard, eyes darting away from Bec long enough that her heart started to sink. At least until she heard his words. “Which one of those many white doors leads to your bedroom?”
Bec grinned, because she knew the hall did have a lot of doors. Four in one corner of her apartment, in fact—one leading to her bedroom, another to a half bathroom, there was also a linen closet and her washer-dryer.
She debated for a heartbeat, thinking of several ways to tease him.
Game show model presenting doors.
Her version of whack-a-mole, only with guess-the-door instead.
Hot-cold-hotter-colder.
Then the arm holding the upper half of her body shifted, sliding around her rib cage, calloused fingers brushing along her side, grazing the underside of one breast, rubbing over the top of her nipple.
Stars flashed behind her eyes.
Luke bent, sucked that nipple into his mouth, and made her forget about her plans to tease him. “Which door?” he asked again, releasing her and straightening.
“I—“
Another brush of that thumb and really, if driving her insane with need was a sport then Luke Pearson definitely excelled at it.
“Door, sugar pie,” he said again, walking toward the hall.
“Second on the left.”
He shifted her body so he could turn the knob and opened the correct door. A bare heartbeat later, she was flat on her back with him on top of her.
One long, slow drag of his tongue up her abdomen, up her sternum, and then over, back to her breast, back to the aching points of her nipples. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he told her.
“It’s the short-shorts,” she managed to joke, even though his tongue was teasing her breasts and she was slowly going insane.
Never let it be said that Bec Darden lost her cool. She was calm and composed—
Except when Luke did that thing with his tongue.
Because any hope of composure went straight out the window.
Luckily, Luke didn’t seem to mind in the least.
Fifteen
Luke
He’d been shown up. He knew it. Fuck, the whole universe knew he’d been bested by a checkered blanket and a bright red bikini top.
But Luke found it didn’t bother him at all.
Not when she was half-naked beneath him, skin like silken fire. He wanted to touch her all over, to stroke and kiss and lick every inch of her, but he also needed to be sure she wasn’t rushing this, that she was as fully into this as he was—
Luke snorted.
Becky froze, glanced up at him. “What?”
“I was going around in my head why this both is and isn’t a good idea.” Her eyes started to dim, and he grabbed her hand, dragging it down his cock, which was threatening to break in half. “I want you. Don’t ever doubt that, okay?” He waited until she nodded. “I was worried you were doing something you didn’t want.”
She raised a brow.
“Hence, the snort.” He nuzzled at her neck. “My Becky doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want, least of all me.”
“Your Bec,” she said. “And sidenote, I’m going to get you back for all this Becky talk. My friends have sent me no less than a million Valley girl GIFS. I think I need to resurrect the Lucky Luke nickname.”
He shuddered. “Please God, no.”
She shoved at his shoulders. “Then you’d better strip me out of these short ass shorts and spend some quality time between my thighs.”
“Oh, really?” Luke let his fingers drift down her abdomen, dip under the waistband of those shorts. Becky shivered, hips shifting restlessly. “You want my mouth?”
Feminine hands darted between them, undid the button, slid down the zipper. “I seem to remember you could do some really impressive things with your mouth, Pearson.”
“Hmm.”
A kiss just above her belly button then below.
“Now you sound like Heather.”
“Shh.” A nip to her hip bone. “I don’t want to think about Heather. I want to think about how good your pussy is going to taste.” He punctuated his statement by tugging off her shorts and underwear then dragging one finger between her wet folds.
Her breath caught when he brought it up to his mouth and sucked, closing his eyes as the sweet tang hit his tongue. She spread her thighs further, tilted her hips.
“Luke.”
An invitation.
One that he didn’t need an engraved postcard to heed.
He tossed her legs over his shoulders, and she wove her hands into his hair, yanked his mouth against her pussy, and ground herself against him.
Suddenly, Luke wasn’t thinking about teasing any longer. Or at least not him being teased. His woman on the other hand . . .
He figured he had about ten years’ worth of time to make up for.
Thus, he pulled out every trick he possessed, everything he knew Becky had liked in the past, every technique he’d learned and perfected since then. He licked and kissed and nipped, concentrating all his efforts on making her feel good, on driving her to the edge of reason, on propelling her straight to an orgasm.
Fingers in his hair, the grip bordering on painful, but Luke didn’t give a damn, not when he had his Becky wet and hot against his mouth.
“Oh, my God—”
Thighs clamped around his head, her spine arched off the mattress, and she screamed his name.
He brought her down, slowing the movements of his tongue and fingers, helping her descend the peak, continuing to kiss her as her movements calmed . . . and not stopping until she was writhing against him again, gripping his hair, cursing him out.
And then he just used his fingers.
He kept them on her clit, circling, pressing, slipping down and inside, because his mouth was otherwise occupied.
As in he needed to get it on her breasts.
Her nipples were hard little points, and he sucked one into his mouth. “Luke— Oh God! Mmm, baby. I—” He switched sides, slid another finger into the heat of her, curling them up and forward, rubbing against her G-spot, feeling moisture pool around him.
“Oh fuck,” she gasped. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh—”
She clamped down hard around his fingers, and Luke almost went over the edge with her. It had been so fucking long, and watching her come—seeing the pink spreading across her cheeks, the tops of her breasts, a sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead—was absolutely beautiful.
She was beautiful.
Especially, when her eyes opened and focused on him with lazy awareness. Swollen lips tipped upward into a smile. “You’ll do, Pearson. You’ll do.”
He twitched his fingers—the ones still deep inside her. “You sure?” Another twitch that made her gasp and her pussy pulse around him. “Because I think”—he started moving, slow and gentle and in a rhythm that would soon have her climbing that peak again—“I might still need to prove myself to you.”
His thumb drifted up—
“Touch my clit and die.”
Luke laughed. He was fully dressed with a naked Becky and had a boner that could easily substitute for a hammer, and he was laughing.
Using his free hand, he cupped her cheek. “How did I ever let you go?”
Regret, and this time no pun was intended, hammered into him. But dammit, he’d wasted so much fucking time.
�
��Hey.”
One sharp word of a sound, surprising his eyes into meeting hers.
“I think we’ve been over this already.” Beck gripped his wrist, slid his fingers from her, lips parting in a silent protest before she shook her head and seemed to regain herself. “The past is the past, and we’re going to move forward. Going to try and—”
“See,” he said, moving up on the bed and lying down next to her. “It’s not that simple—”
“Ugh.” She threw her hands up. “You’re ruining my orgasm afterglow.”
“Uh—”
“We fucked up, okay?” she said, pushing up and jabbing him in the chest with one red-painted fingernail. “Both of us. That’s the way this works.”
“I was—”
“Oh, so are we going to play Who Was the Bigger Asshole now?” she snapped. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure we both would win that top prize.” When he opened his mouth, she hurried to say, “Did you tell me to go? Yes. Did I say a lot of shitty stuff before that? Fuck yes.”
Luke blinked.
“Forgot about that part?” She huffed. “Yeah. Thought so. Luke, you were jealous of my success in part because I rubbed it in. I was hurt you weren’t as happy for me about the job as you should have been, so I talked about it every chance I got. I made you feel inadequate and—”
He caught her hand. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. If I’d been supportive like a real husband should have been—”
“And there’s another should have.” She tugged her hand free, popped up from the mattress, and started pacing the room in all her naked glory. Or, it would have been glorious, if her words didn’t slice to the center of him. “How convenient. You get to play the martyr and shoulder the blame for everything, and then we never work out what was truly wrong with our relationship.”
His heart skipped a beat.
Because, dammit, his therapist had said much of the same thing. Absorbing blame was one way to take control of a situation, but it was also a way to push people away. To sacrifice himself for their good.
Even if such a sacrifice wasn’t for the betterment of the people involved.
He cleared his throat, shoved down the urge to keep arguing that everything was his fault and forced himself to ask, “What was wrong with us?”
“Communication, Luke.” She stopped, stared at him. “Even now, we both have all of these feelings that are tearing us up inside and we’re masking them with apologies and sex and cute date nights that only relive the good stuff.” Becky crossed back over to him and sat on the edge of the mattress. “We’re forgetting the hard days. The disagreements and blaring arguments, and . . . we’re forgetting what made us us.”
He slipped off his shirt then tugged it over her head. “That tore us apart. Before.”
A nod. “It did.”
“I’m not going to let it drag us back down,” he said. “But I also can’t just pretend that I didn’t fuck up.”
She touched his jean-clad leg. “The important point is that we both fucked up. That’s the part you need to accept.”
Luke froze. “It goes against everything in me to let someone else take the blame.”
A smile. “I know.”
“But it’s also the truth. We both made mistakes and if we want to move forward . . .”
“We have to let that go.”
He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”
Becky curled into his side. “I understand now.” A smile. “Finally, I get it. We can’t go back and fix everything from before, but we can build something strong now. It’s only . . .”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I worry if we can’t stop focusing on how things were and all the mistakes we made, I worry we’ll be destined to—” She broke off, shook her head.
“I’m keeping you,” he said. “So tough shit with the psychological stuff or the destined to fall apart nonsense. The one thing I learned in therapy was that I have never stopped loving you—”
“Then just be the Luke I know you can be,” she said. “If you love me, then stop hurting yourself. Because, fuck, it hurts me so much when you do that.”
He dropped his chin to his chest, sighed. “I hate it when you’re smarter than me.”
She laughed, that lovely laugh that filled him up with helium from the inside out. “Face facts, Pearson. You love me because I am smarter than you.”
“Not hard to do.”
Becky dropped her head to his shoulder. “I admit that I was recalcitrant at first, scared of getting hurt again, but that in and of itself was the truth of it. No other man I’ve met is capable of getting close enough to wound me.”
His heart skipped a beat. “That’s a dubious honor if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Don’t you see?” she said, pushing up with one on his chest so she could stare down at him. “Don’t you know you’re the only man to ever penetrate the armor around my heart? Don’t you understand that you’re the only one who ever mattered?”
Luke’s throat was tight, and his eyes burned suspiciously. “Come here.”
He tugged Becky close, turning them so they were lying long ways on the bed and then he held her, turning over the words in his mind, replaying their years together, studying their mistakes. He did so not as a way to flagellate himself with the multitude of regrets and should haves. Instead, he remembered the good times and the bad. Together. As pieces of an entire puzzle that formed a picture in color rather than black and white, rather than past equaled bad.
Instead, he saw everything.
Imperfect as it was.
And for the first time in his life, he wasn’t worrying about measuring up to some perfect image his father or family wanted him to be. He wasn’t worrying about being the perfect boyfriend or spouse.
Finally, Luke was free to be himself.
He shucked his jeans, tugged the covers up and over them, a huge weight lifted from his chest. Becky snuggled right against his side, her hair tickling his nose, floral scent surrounding him like the softest blanket.
She was wearing his shirt and as a result of just holding her, he was sporting a boner the size of Georgia and . . . he didn’t care.
Because Becky was in his arms at last.
He kissed the top of her head, eyes beginning to close, her breathing slowing, evening out—
“I’m the only man to penetrate you?”
Without missing a beat, without even lifting her head, she pinched him just above the nipple. “Pig.”
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” she said, her tone conveying the opposite. The fingers that had pinched him, drifted down his chest lazily. “I should—”
He caught that wandering hand, pressed a kiss to the palm.
“You should sleep and let me hold you.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
But Luke felt her smile against his shoulder.
“Your therapist sucked.”
He laughed. “You should have seen me before.”
“I did see you before.”
“Really?” He ran his fingers through her hair. “And you say I’m the worst?”
“We can share the mantle.” She snuggled close, traced circles on his chest.
“I’d share anything with you, sugar pie.”
“Lucky Luke,” she warned.
“Did you ever—” He stopped.
One eyelid peeled back. “Did I what?”
“Did you talk to someone too?” he asked. “I mean, we both have textbook daddy issues, but you’re significantly better adjusted than I am.”
Her mouth curved. “That’s because I’m awesome. It’s also not true.” The smile faded. “I’m still—not screwed up exactly, and I am in a better place. But I have this hole in my heart and I’m not sure it will ever go away.”
“Sweetheart.” His own heart hurt for her.
“I just always wanted things to be different between my dad and me—” She blinked, her tone becoming more b
usinesslike, less sad. “But actually, hearing that you went to therapy kind of makes me want to try it myself.” She pressed her palm to his chest. “Not right now, but eventually, maybe it might be good to talk with someone.”
“I think that sounds very mature.”
She made a face. “Gross.” But then she laughed, and he found himself chuckling along with her. “I wasn’t in the right head space to talk to anyone before now. I was just lucky to have Abby and Sera and now the rest of the girls and honestly, the rest of it came from work. Work got me through a lot of the darkness. Helping other people, feeling like I had some worth in this world because I could get them some recompense. And, eventually, I was able to believe that was true.”
“You’re amazing.”
She snuggled against him again. “Lies.”
“Not lies. The truth.”
A sigh, but a relaxed one rather than annoyance for a change. “If you insist.”
“I do insist,” he said and wrapped his arms around, letting his eyes slide closed, enjoying the feel of her next to him, the scent of wildflowers and sunshine teasing his nose. “Sweetheart?” he asked a few minutes later.
“Mmm?”
“Thank you.”
“Anytime, Pearson. Anytime.”
They tumbled headfirst into sleep, waking up hours later to eat cold pizza and drink warm beer as they binged on bad reality TV. It was different from ten years ago, but Luke decided that was perfectly—imperfectly—fine with him.
Sixteen
Becky—er Bec
Internal revelations were exhausting.
Bec prided herself on not filtering, on being the type of person who existed without artifice. There was a reason she didn’t date, why her father could barely stand the sight of her. But she’d been kidding herself when it came to Luke.
As in she’d tried to pretend that she was going to casually give their relationship another go, like one might try on a different shade of red lipstick.
But she should have known that things would get complicated.
Hell, just picking the right shade of red lipstick was really fucking hard.
Categorizing Luke was harder.
Or had been harder.
